Falling
by missnazimova
Summary: She doesn't like people and she especially doesn't like men that aren't her brothers but this one is under her skin before she even realised he was burrowing in.


**A/n, First time poster here and I'm pretty nervous, please be gentle.**

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><p>He's lying to her.<p>

She knows it as surely as she knows her own mind but Sarah O'Brien has well and truly changed her spots and is not intending to cause trouble. She won't stir, as much as she dearly wants to, and instead returns the small smile he gifts her with as she stands in the doorway of his bedroom. He's been here for a year now and she's liked him more and more with each passing day – he's got a skill, a talent that precious few have and she respects that in a man. He's blessedly quiet too: not chattering away foolishly like Ethel does sometimes and Daisy used to, but it's not the chatter that bothers her really, it's the nonsensical things they say and it's not just Ethel and Daisy, it's every last bloody one of them, talking and talking as though somehow their concerns and their good will are going to save the men at the front. If she felt like being cruel she'd tell them that their good will is not going to save William and it didn't save Patmore's nephew but their indifference has already delivered Thomas from the jaws of death and perhaps it's _they_ that are the trouble and they're all damning young men with their love.

Lang is not young. Not really. She sees in him the feelings of an old man, the feelings she used to see in Carson before he aged another fifty years and there aren't words for how old he looks, but Lang is older than her brother was even if he's younger than her. She feels her protective instinct unfurl but it's different this time and she can't put her finger on it. She can't recall incidents of washing his grazed knees and tucking him in with other brothers, layered under blankets to fight the cold wind away, or laughing at his blushes when the girls walk past.

He's falling apart physically but every time she asks he claims to be fine. She can see his hands shaking and hear the wavering of his voice and it worries her more and more every time but there's nothing she can do about it if he won't even bloody admit it. She's used to guiding people without them even realising it though: she's spent over a decade with her ladyship, making sly suggestions here and there and pushing her into bringing Thomas back and disliking her husband's valet. She can't claim to be particularly apologetic for either of these things and she vows to use these skills to help the man she can't stop herself liking more and more every day. She doesn't like people and she especially doesn't like men that aren't her brothers but this one is under her skin before she even realised he was burrowing in and she's too caught up in wanting to make him feel better to think about how she'd feel if there wasn't a war on.

Hughes and Carson, those terminal upholders of decency, think nothing of the spinster O'Brien being in Mr Lang's room. He's a man they might have been wary of before all this madness began and O'Brien can see why. Before the war he would have been untarnished, handsome, softly-spoken and with a decent job and a threat to the virtue of housemaids everywhere but now he was a wreck and as far as they were concerned she was practically without femininity. So they leave them alone and she sits on his bed, stroking the side of his face idly to soothe him into a more restful sleep. It doesn't last and he's soon wriggling again, his undershirt becoming damp with sweat once more and she puts a hand on his chest to rouse him from the bad dream.

"What're we goin' to do with you Mr Lang?"

He hesitates for a moment, a moment in which Sarah is half-convinced that he can't see her properly and she's merely a hazy shadow of a woman without a face, but he soon leans forward, grabbing her upper arm with a strong hand and presses his lips to hers desperately. She's not too sure what he wants from her to begin with and panic shoots through her: she's never been this close to a man in his bedroom before and her cheeks blush but she lets him kiss her. It's not right though, everything about this world is wrong and the kiss is the wrongest thing in it at the moment.

He tastes of ash and she doesn't like to imagine what kind of death she tastes of to him.

end.

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><p><strong>Please R&amp;R<strong>


End file.
